Malice (Novel)
Malice is the first novel in the Duology series, written by Chris Wooding and illustrated by Dan Chernett. It's a story about two main characters, Seth Harper and Kady Blake. These two characters are teenagers who have a friend, Luke, who has said a ritual to get sent to Malice. Seth and Kady soon find out Luke has been somehow sucked inside the comic, and has been eaten by the horrors of the world of Malice, and then venture into the world of Malice. This book was published on October 2009 by the Scholastic Press. Many reviews were viewed as positive reviews, giving it five out of five stars, and saying positive things about this book. This book is kind of a comic/novel type of book, making it an interesting novel. Summary It started off on a warm, windy August night. Luke, a teenage boy, showed his friend, Heather, a comic called Malice. Heather was hesitant about reading it, but they read it anyway. It was so terribly scary that they stopped. Luke had fun scaring her though so he did a special ritual to prove Malice wasn't real. The ritual needed six ingredients; a black feather, a twig, a knot of previously shed cat fur(meaning it has to be fur that came off naturally from a cat), a tear, a piece of the person's hair that was doing the ritual, and fire. Luke completed the task in his bedroom, then said the final phrase "Tall Jake take me away" six times. Heather insisted him to stop because it was nonsense, but Luke went on. After the ritual, Luke proved his point to Heather that it was nothing but a legend. All of a sudden, the lights went out. Heather thought the ritual caused the lights to go out, but Luke explained it was just a fuse. He walked down to the cellar of his house to turn the fuse on. As he ventured downstairs, he heard strange noises and the sound of rats running around in the dark. He got to the cellar door and found a flashlight. As he turned the knob, scratching came from the other side. He stepped back in fear, but then convinced himself that it was just a cat and opened the door boldly. A monstrous thing appeared out of nowhere, and Luke shined his flashlight on it to see that it was a sharp black creature, like a shadow, except it had horns and fangs all over. The bright light blinded him, and the thing disappeared, then his mother opened the front door, coming home from the store. It was scary. He later recounts the story to his friend Seth, and then afterword mysteriously goes missing. After various investigations into the rumor, Seth and his friend Kady find the comic store where Malice is sold, only for the shopkeeper to pretend not to know what the kids are talking about, so Seth manages to steal a copy while Kady distracts the shopkeeper. Seth reads the comic and sees his friend Luke being devoured by beasts in the story. He then decides to do the ritual so that Kady can find out if the comic is real, and if it is, figure out how to put a stop to it. Seth completes the ritual late at night and falls asleep in fear of what will happen to him. Meanwhile, Kady finds out a vacation she remembers was placed into her memory via hypnosis, and never really occurred. She then realizes that she was in Malice, and lost her memory when she got out. She is confused and wonders why her mom would lie to her, then goes after Seth by getting into Malice with a white ticket. Meanwhile, Seth meets a guy called Justin, a guy that got stuck in the book as well and they go on a adventure to find a ticket to get back home.